THE BEAGLE WHO BECAME AMERICA'S EVERYDOG
Neighbors of the Schulz family in St. Paul agreed that their dog Spike was a smart pooch. Part pointer, part beagle, Spike could ring doorbells. He fetched potatoes from the cellar. Spike seemed to have a mind, a soul, a purpose. That boy who owned him, however. . .
Charles Schulz seemed made of the Midwest. Quiet and morose, he called himself “a nothing young man.” His only ambition was “to be as well-liked as my father,” a barber. World War II made him a sergeant, but he came home with just some vague dream of being a cartoonist. Then on October 4, 1950, Spike and the boy who loved him stepped forth in newspapers and Snoopy was born.
It’s easy to be jaded about Snoopy these days. The damn dog is everywhere. Entire generations know him only as a shill for greeting cards and life insurance.
But there was a time in the 1960s when Schulz’s beagle broke all the cartoon rules. Snoopy, before he sold out, was unlike any other dog on the planet. His evolution from loyal lapdog to World Famous Beagle “did more than change ‘Peanuts,’” newsman Walter Cronkite said. “It changed all comics.”
Throughout “Peanuts” first decade, with Schroeder at his piano, Linus and his blanket, Charlie Brown and his angst, Snoopy was just another cartoon dog. Then in 1965, he stepped into his own and saved “Peanuts” from its own cuteness.
For five wonderful years, Snoopy knew no limits. His small doghouse seemed equally unbounded. Apparently Snoopy had a pool table, a cedar closet, a stereo, a Van Gogh. Meanwhile, Snoopy imagined himself a life. A master of imitation, he used his ears and teeth to become a piranha, a gargoyle, a vulture. . .
Then one day, Schulz’s son Monte wandered into his dad’s drawing room carrying a World War I model airplane. Schulz recalled the flying ace movies he’d seen as a boy. Soon Snoopy’s doghouse became a Sopwith Camel chasing Germany’s Red Baron. The comic world watched in wonder.
“What does a dog know about World War I and the Red Baron?” asked Mort Walker, creator of “Beetle Bailey.” “That’s when I realized I didn’t know anything about the comic business.”
Next came Snoopy as all-American wannabe. He was the World Famous Writer, the World Famous Skier, Skater, Surfer. He was Joe Cool on campus. He was the Easter Beagle. Schulz called him “a mixture of innocence and egotism.” Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau said, “My career is all his fault.”
By the late 1960s, Snoopy was a national treasure. His plump face appeared on fighter planes. On a Macy’s Parade Balloon. Approaching the moon, NASA’s Apollo 10 lunar module was dubbed Snoopy, and when astronaut Gene Cernan held up a drawing of Snoopy, a billion people saw it.
Alas, fame went to Snoopy’s head. Schulz found it “difficult to keep him from taking over the feature.” In the 1970s, new characters came to “Peanuts.” Once the little bird Woodstock began flying around Snoopy’s doghouse, cuteness triumphed. “We kept trying to be amused,” one critic wrote, “but the little bursts of identification became less and less frequent.”
Snoopy now has his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Tokyo has a Snoopy Museum. But those who consider him just another pop icon should go back to the old strips, back to the days when, with a kiss, a dance, an aviator’s scarf, Snoopy became America’s Everydog.
